Breaking at the end of your lines
by a red burn
Summary: She learns that killing a man isn't what makes a person hollow. It's taking everything away from you that does. Nathan/Sarah, post 309.


**A/N**: This is a Sarah centric fic and hopefully people will be interested in it. I just feel so bad for her because she fell in love with a guy she lost the next day. Nathan went back to his Audrey with a second chance, but Sarah was left by herself with memories of a guy she'd never see again. I honestly hope Audrey starts remembering being Sarah like she's being Lucy, this way she can realize that she didn't lose Nathan, that she has her second chance with him as well.

This was supposed to be a simple one shot on Sarah's pregnancy and her feelings during it, but it turned into something else completely, deeper and definitely longer than I had planned. So this is going to be a two parter, possibly 3 depending on how long the next chapter gets. Hopefully there are enough people interested in Sarah that will enjoy this fic :)

There will be Nathan/Sarah, just hold on.

_xxx_

The first time it happens she's drinking a late afternoon coffee at the Shore Club when the smell of grilled cheese hits her nose like a full time bomb and bile rises up in her throat.

She's rolling the coin around her fingers, feeling the nooks and indentations; a pattern she has long learned by heart. She still stares at the date stamped on it when she's alone, not perplexed anymore, but with longing. Like Stuart and his picture, she holds on to an idea, to a certainty that there may be something for her in the future. She tries to picture Nathan handling the coin, the pads of his fingers brushing against her skin the way it must have done with the small 5 cent in her palm. She keeps it out of it sight most times, hid inside her pocket or her purse, but constantly with her.

Sarah covers her mouth with her hand and tries not to breathe as she rushes out of the dinner and into fresh air, the coin digging into the inside her hand as her fingers close around it for dear life. She takes a deep breath when she gets outside, away from the smell of grease and beer and manages to keep her sickness under control.

She looks down at the coin in her hand and presses her palms against it in an exasperated attempt to make sure it's still there, that she didn't lose it on the way out. She knows it's silly, but it's the only connection she has to a man she barely knows but has dug something deep inside her chest. A man that had looked at her as if he knew all of her secrets, as if the blood pumping inside her veins and the soul crackling inside her being were much his as they were hers.

She knows it's a juvenile fantasy she has to let go of but she's not ready for it, not yet.

_xx_

2010. She rubs the pad of her finger over the date.

Sometimes she wonders what would happen if she's sent to the same place Nathan's from. She can't lie and deny she never considered activating Stuart's trouble for her own gain, but the thought is always dropped immediately. She grips the coin inside the pocket of her uniform and watches as Stuart takes tentative steps around the garden. She's here to help people, not use them, and seeing her patient smile at the flowers in front of him she knows she's making the right choice.

The coin is warm between her fingers and she presses her thumb against the date indentation again, picturing the year in her mind's eye. She's seen enough strange things in the two months she's been in Haven to accept time travel as an occasional hazard. She tries to keep Stuart calm enough to not cause any sort of conflict and so far she's been successful.

She wants to learn more about him, about _Nathan_, about the place he's from. She wants to learn how he knew the curves of her body, how he knew how to look at her, how he knew the right words to say. She wants to learn why she felt then as if she had always known him, as if that moment in time was always supposed to happen. Why she can't get out of her mind somebody she had known for only a day.

Sarah's hands tremble at the thought of his lips on hers, at the way his kisses had sent a jolt of something so familiar through her body. She grips the coin harder and tries to ignore the kicking in the back of her mind, the soft hollowness of her stomach, the feeling that she's missing something, that there are gaps in her mind she needs to fill but isn't sure with what.

_xx_

She embraces the toilet like an old friend. Her stomach contracts and grumbles and bile rises in the back of her throat. She tries to ease the spasms but what's left of her late night snack find its way out as Sarah bends over the ceramic, spitting the bitter taste after she's done throwing up.

Sarah wipes the cold sweat from her forehead and rests her head against the titled wall while she waits for her stomach to calm down. She curses silently because she has too much to do; this isn't the time to get sick, but the quivering of her stomach and the dizziness tell her she's coming down with something.

The alarm clock rings forgotten in the bedroom as she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as she tries to get the queasiness under control. The moonlight is slowly giving place to the sun and as she watches the shadows change against the floor, Sarah's hand move down her gown until she realizes there's no pocket and there's no coin. She panics for a moment, a split second that her brain takes to access her memories and process the information; the coin is safely guarded inside the drawer on her bedside table. For the past few weeks she's gotten so used to having it with her at all times that her hands move at their own volition, her fingers dance even when there's no coin rolling around them.

She gets up quickly, ignoring the way the room threatens to spin around her and the warning from her stomach that she's about to throw up again at any minute. She knows it will be there, but she still opens the drawer with more desperation than is needed, only to find the 5 cent resting against a handkerchief. She picks it up gently and rubs the pad of her thumb against the date; knowing that he's out there, that he's alive where he belongs gives her comfort for some reason, some strange sense of hope.

She walks back to the bathroom to brush the bitter taste of bile from her mouth, the coin locked tight inside her hand.

_xx_

She's filling out some hospital forms when she checks the date and a bubble pops inside her head. _She's late._

Sarah stares at the half eaten extra large roast beef sandwich on the desk and starts counting the days in her head until panic settles in and she switches to the calendar, moving the pages back to August. She counts the days, then the weeks and as her breath starts getting labored and her ears start buzzing, everything suddenly makes sense. The sickness, the hunger, the black spots in her vision, the tiredness. Then she counts the days all over again.

She had been sure she was just sick, that she had gotten a cold because of the seasons change or her constant contact with people of weaker health, that being around a hospital all day would take its toll on her now and then. Denial clouds her vision as Sarah refuses to believe the reason for her health state lately is something a lot simpler than a number of diseases.

It's the stress, she tells herself, because working at the hospital and helping the troubled is a full time job. The longer she stays, the more she finds out about these people that need her help more than anything. People that would otherwise be left to fend for themselves, scared children and confused elderly. She has a gift; she knows that, an intuition that drives her to know how to help these people like nobody ever could. It's something about herself that Nathan knew even before she realized and she had trusted him, his words, the way his hand had covered her cheek and made something bloom inside of her.

How could she even think about small things when she has so much in her mind?

Her hands shake at the realization and the sight of food suddenly makes her stomach ripple. Sarah throws the sandwich away with disgust and stands up with a decision in mind. Better to settle this and be certain of the result than to wait for a confirmation when it's too late.

_xx_

She holds the result crumpled in one hand and the coin in the other, rolling it around her fingers in an automatic motion. She has long given up trying to hold the tears back, her face blotched and swollen and she's glad she's locked away in the basement, where nobody goes, where she can be alone and in peace because she needs the privacy.

Eight weeks and counting. Fifty four days.

She sits against a set of shelves, tries not to think about the body that had lay dead not too far away from her, not too long ago. Red blood pooling around him as regret and pain swept her up. This time her mind isn't reeling from a life she's taken, but for a life she's giving.

She counts the days in her head again, starts from the 16th of August, lingers on every single one of them as she remembers the longing and the pining and the secret wishes. How could she begin to explain any of this to anyone at all? How can she tell her friends she's pregnant with the baby of a guy that belongs somewhere else? Sarah rubs her fingertip against the date on the coin once again, wishing not for the first time and likely not for the last that she could simply close her eyes and open them in a completely different place, different time. _A different Haven_.

She learned not too long ago she's somehow immune to the troubles, she can see through them, live through them, soothe them, but she's never affected. She's _special_. Nathan knew that, he knew her; he knew what she can do, what she is, that she's important. She never questioned him why or how, because she trusted him from the moment he had told her she's incredible. She had trusted his words and his judgment without doubt or second guessing, a feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her this was okay, this was right. He knew her not from now, but from _then_, from his time.

In a different Haven, in a different time, they may be together. The thought squeezes her chest and makes her head hurt instead of soothing her soul because somewhere in time there's another one of her that has him, that he'll never be hers. That when he said he belong somewhere else he really meant he belong to someone else.

Sarah pulls her knees up, put her arms around them and lays her head down. The pain she's feeling doesn't come from memories of warzones, and lives lost, of the metallic smell of blood and torn limbs, but from something bigger, something heavier. During the war she had hope, she knew that peace and security and freedom may come someday, but this is something final. There's no if, no maybe. She's alone and she'll always be.

_xx_

She considers interrupting the pregnancy sometimes, when the sickness turns her stomach inside out, when the bitter taste of foul food and bile stick to her mouth too often, when the thought of facing this alone and the heavy burden of the truth of the baby's conception sits on her chest and makes it almost impossible to breath. She considers it when she has to struggle to tie the belt of her uniform and it stills strains around her middle and she thinks about what will happen when she really starts to show.

She begs for forgiveness every single time the thought crosses her mind.

She's barely fifteen weeks, December just around the corner and she's grateful for the weather; the icy wind and sharp cold helps her hide her frame under heavier coats, hide her breasts are they start getting fuller and her hips as they slowly start to widen, but she knows this pretense can only go so far and there's only so much she can do.

As she makes her way to the Haven Herald, Sarah checks her pocket, makes sure the coin is there, a heavy weight burning a hole through her skin, then her hand moves down to her middle, rests against the bump that has been forming for the past few weeks, the way her stomach is hardened and tight. Two secrets she carries locked up in a forbidden chain as every moment she lives is wrong, because there isn't much for her to be right about. She only has her memories to hold on to, because everything else is a permanence which she will never have, everything else is a sum of the days she lives through, half in the present, half in the past. The baby and the coin a connection to something, to someone, that will be forever gone.

The bell above the door rings as she enters the newspaper forte, a sound that chimes in the back muffled by the thoughts running through her head, by the help she so desperately needs but doesn't want to ask. She'd keep this baby to herself if she could, covered in a cocoon of secrets and protection. She doesn't know where this feeling comes from, this immobilizing fear of the truth, of the future, of answers for questions she has yet to ask. As if a part of herself, as if the intuition she has always been so proud of, is constantly screaming at her, knocking on the back of her head, spitting its warning.

"I'm pregnant."

Vince and Dave stare at her as if they can't quite make out the words she's just said. They may be running the town's paper, but they're her closest friends here, the other two people that know as much about the troubles as she does and the only ones she'd trust with her secret because she doesn't have much choice.

Vince's the first to gather his bearings and stop starring as if she's just turned into someone else, mostly because Dave's too busy gaping at her to do much talking. "How did that happen?"

She actually blushes. She isn't the shy type, or at least she's always thought that, and she knows as well as they both do how it happened, though she doesn't share that bit of information, especially because whatever happened before this baby came to be isn't of their concern.

He has the decency of looking embarrassed before trying to correct himself. "I don't mean…"

"It doesn't matter. I need your help because I'm keeping this baby and I don't know what to do." She leaves out the important part, leaves out the fact she's holding on to something that isn't hers in the hopes that one day it will be, leaves out all the unnecessary explanations.

The rest of the evening is spent making questions, answering them, making plans and hiding secrets. She tells them she's over three months but doesn't give any estimate date, refuses to say who the father is and everything that happened that day. She doesn't tell them about the shadows hiding around corners and in her doorways and the terrible fear always present in her heart.

They have become her guiding light when her anchor drifted away.

_xx_

tbc


End file.
